Road to Nowhere
by Enigmatised
Summary: Ajay Loner moved to Strangetown to escape his family. He seems to settle in quickly; the locals seem pleasant and he finds a job as a secretary. But of course, Strangetown is never as simple as it appears on the surface...
1. A New Life in a New Town

**A/N:** Hi everyone. This is the first time I've written something based on The Sims, but inspiration struck recently. Hope you enjoy. I'm not entirely sure where this is going yet myself, but I do have several ideas for how the plot may wind up.

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Ajay Loner had been an unremarkable man; just another young singleton moving to a new town to escape his family and pursue his own hopes and dreams to strike it rich. Nothing unusual about that. Nothing at all.

Until you understand that Ajay's newly bought bachelor pad resided in Strangetown, a place infamous amongst sims for being the site of many a supernatural disaster. In just the past couple of years, there had been reports of aliens coming down from space and copulating with both male and female sims to proliferate their species, as well as the reappearance of a minor celebrity miles away from her home having suffered from amnesia. Her mind had been wiped clean of her husband and daughter. Nobody ever found out what happened, though many took the lazy route and blamed the infamous aliens. Ghosts were seen so often in Strangetown that their appearance was no longer newsworthy. The small town's negative publicity would have been enough to have most average sims running for the hills. It was a surprise that Strangetown had remained a thriving community, but of course, the oddballs had to have somewhere to live.

Ajay held in his hand a scrap of lined paper with its edges torn and an address scrawled across it in splotchy blue biro:

_91, Road to Nowhere,  
__Strangetown,  
__Fiesta Desert,  
__Sim Nation  
__FS3 2RN_

'_Road to Nowhere'_… It sounded ominous in itself as is, even disregarding the goings on of Strangetown.

Ajay wordlessly handed the note to the burley, rough-skinned trucker through the driver's window. The sweaty man looked apathetic and smoked a cigarette, blowing smoke into Ajay's deep brown eyes.

"Yeah, sure buddy," he nodded, tilting the brim of his blue cap upwards. Ajay rubbed his eyelids and smiled in response. Together with the help of the trucker and his middle-aged father Vikram, the twentysomething loaded up the few possessions he could call his own and departed his family home for good. He didn't look backwards, but reflected in the side mirror of the truck, he could see his frail, white-haired mother sobbing.

Vikram consoled Madhuri, placing an arm around her and gently stroking her shoulder and curling her hair around his index finger. "Ajay has always been a rebellious one," Vikram muttered darkly, squeezing his wife's arm. The white moving truck sped off into the distance, a cloud of dust billowing up from behind its thick black tyres. Ajay sighed and leant his head against the warm glass window.

"Somethin' botherin' ya, kid?" the older man with unwashed salt-and-pepper hair asked. Ajay shook his head and began reading the _SimCity Herald_ that was sitting on the dashboard, mostly so that he wouldn't have to maintain small talk.

Five hot hours later, the moving truck pulled up at the side of a concrete highway running linearly through a wasting landscape. Road to Nowhere split a canyon in two; dry, crumbling red cliffs towered on either side. The sparse settlement was far enough away as not to be devastated if the cliffs did collapse, but still… Ajay gulped. The reality was that this was his life now. His new house was panelled in pale lemon siding and featured a single cactus in its front yard. The local paper boy had left a copy of _The Strangetown Eye _beside his mailbox. Sand fell from between the bleached pages when Ajay picked it up. He had barely gotten out of the truck, yet felt the intense rays beating down on his bare neck.

'_New Nuclear Plant to Open on Road to Nowhere.'_

The young man turned his head and noted the large grey cooling towers further towards the horizon. Their silhouettes were visible between the canyon walls. Strangetown seemed like a suitably out-of-the-way place to try out any controversial science, so Ajay wasn't too surprised. _Well, at least nothing suspicious is going on right now, _he thought, folding up the _Eye_ and making his way inside.

He smiled. The main room was spacious and the kitchenette would suffice. He had a small bedroom with a small single bed and pale blue painted walls. A wooden-framed window granted him a picturesque view of the canyon and the bountiful stars that would surely blanket it at night.

The trucker gruffly helped Ajay drag in the couple of mouldy cardboard boxes housing his worldly possessions, took his payment and skidded off out of the desert never to be seen again. It was the point of no return. He had done it. Ajay couldn't help but feel highly aware of his nerves tingling. His parents really did have no control over him anymore. He would not be coerced into an arranged marriage against his will and he would not be expected to follow the traditional, backwards customs of his ancestral culture. He was a free man, ready to carve his own path in the world, and a free man always needed a job.

Ajay lay back into his hard mattress and crossed one leg casually over his knee, scouting the _Eye_ for any vacancies. They were mostly dead-end jobs working as cashiers in the couple of local shops, but one did catch his eye.

_Wanted: Mailroom Technician, Beaker Technologies Inc.  
__Keep the copier and coffee machine in working order. Be organized, prompt, and friendly and have pleasant and helpful telephone manner. Customer service experience desirable.  
__Contact L. Beaker for details. 07855 432190_

Ajay pulled his old mobile phone from his bag and dialled. He felt his chest rise and fall as he listened to the tinny ringing tone and waited nervously. He expected the line to go dead, but after five rings, it crackled into life.

"_Hello, how can I help?"_ queried a melodic male voice slightly distorted by the digitising process.

Ajay bit the knuckle of his left index finger nervously and stammered, "Uh… Hello? Is this _L. Beaker_?"

A short pause. "Yes."

"Well uh, I saw the _Eye_ today… You're advertising a job vacancy?"

Inside the large, castle-like house situated beside a tall radio tower and the only building on the side street named _'Tesla Court'_, Loki Beaker, who sat in a plush armchair in a dark room, grinned, his straight white teeth flashing.

"Perfect," he said quietly. "We need a secretary to keep things… _in check_. Show up outside Tesla Court tomorrow morning at 9am. It's not difficult to find. The radio tower should stand out to you. I'll look forward to seeing what you're made of."


	2. Beaker Technologies Inc

It had taken Ajay precisely seven minutes and eleven seconds to walk to the end of Tesla Court from his bungalow at 91 Road to Nowhere. En route, he had passed five houses, no less than two of which featured swimming pools to their rear. There were no people in the pools or relaxing by their sides. Every resident was locked indoors.

Arriving at the end of Tesla Court, a small side street, Ajay was already at the edge of town. He squinted into the distance, shielding his eyes with a visor made out of his palm, wishing he had checked in the tiny local shop on the way there to ask if they sold sunglasses as he observed Road to Nowhere tapering off to a tiny dot on the horizon between the two canyon walls.

Tesla Court was easy to find. True to word, it featured a large radio antenna where the town received its signals. A middle-aged man was walking downhill. He wore a thick, navy blue knitted sweater. Ajay made a mental note to ask him about this at a later date.

The man wore blonde, backcombed hair and had fair skin that was cold to the touch when he exchanged a firm, masculine handshake with Ajay.

"Loki Beaker, pleased to meet you," he said. He immediately turned on his heels and paced uphill without even giving Ajay a second glance. Nervous, Ajay followed him, making sure to remain several metres to Loki's rear.

Loki paused at a pair of cast iron gates enclosing the only visible house situated on Tesla Court. His smug grin gave the impression that he expected a sign of esteem from Ajay, which he granted with a subtle nod of the head. Loki's house was by far the grandest of all those in Strangetown. As a small community, it would not sound like an impressive achievement unless one knew that well over 90% of Strangetown's residents were exceedingly wealthy and at the top of their careers. Ajay shifted on his feet, feeling somewhat out of place as a young man only just beginning to make his way in the world.

The pair walked along a winding pathway through a garden furnished with cacti and little else. Loki was clearly not a gardener, yet Ajay would have bet money that he was an incredibly house proud man who delighted in boasting that his abode was the grandest in Strangetown.

Inside was no different; the place was panelled in walls of pure mahogany, lavish carpets of foreign origin paved the floors, and a winding staircase ascended up through the high ceiling of the living room. There was no television, only bookshelves as tall as two men lining every inch of the walls. A fire blazed in the hearth, and it was only then that Ajay realised that the heat was no longer unbearable. Outside, he had scratched the skin of his back beneath his black polo shirt and raked up sweat beneath his fingernails. Inside the Beaker manor, the temperature felt pleasantly cosy. Ajay walked towards the stairs.

Loki's face turned and he shouted, "No!" stepping forward and grabbing hold tightly of Ajay's bony wrist. Ajay flinched, staring downwards in deep shame like a child being told off by his headmaster. His arm went limp and Loki retracted his grip. The man exhaled a deep sigh and said, "There are extremely dangerous and unreleased experiments taking place at several locations within this manor. Until I instruct you otherwise, assume it is off limits. That would make you a trespasser, do you understand?"

Ajay swallowed a lump in his throat and nodded quickly, barely able to choke out the phrase, "I'm sorry."

Loki appeared satisfied. He looked Ajay up and down, searching for any signs of dissent and found none.

"Very good," he commended. "Now I will show you to your office."

Comparative to the rest of the house, his 'office' was exceedingly disappointing. The corners of Ajay's mouth dropped when he saw the grubby white desk and outdated computer model sat waiting for him. A limp, neglected ficus plant sat drooping solemnly from an ochre pot.

Throughout the morning, Ajay twiddled his thumbs and browsed the internet. He discovered that Strangetown actually had a spa, which came as a surprise. Apparently it was popular with out of town visitors. It was Strangetown's only attraction for the average person, if you took 'average' to mean people who didn't spend their days ghost busting or looking up into the sky with paranoia fuelled by little green men.

Around noon, a dark-skinned woman with cropped hair introduced herself, bringing Ajay a cup of steaming coffee. Her eyes were obscured by tinted sunglasses which she seemed to wear constantly, for there was certainly no need for them inside the dimly lit abode at 1 Tesla Court. From the moment she entered his suite, she was brushing down the pencil shavings from his desk into a wastepaper basket. She also removed all of the dead, brown leaves from his ficus. She also spoke a lot, though in a dry, monotone voice. She described to him in vague detail the daily workings of Beaker Technologies Inc., including the basics of their coverage from the press in recent times and the companies that they had correspondence with in relation to marketing their newly developed medical products. After an hour long lecture, Ajay was still none the wiser about what the Beaker couple actually _did_. The spread sheet detailing their accounts was equally hand waving: $10,000 for 'equipment' – what was that?!

At 3pm, Ajay departed with instructions to return the following day at the same time. He rolled his eyes as he left, feeling distinctly unfulfilled. He realised right away that there would be no chance to move upwards in this job, for Loki and Circe kept everything a big secret. Oh well, at least he had left $168 richer. He could put the money towards a nice new couch.

The chugging along of a school bus painted bright yellow was the thing that brought Ajay back to Earth on his way home. He paused in his way and stared across the street as four teenagers and two younger children left the vehicle. When the bus pulled off from its only stop in Strangetown, Ajay's mouth hung loose in horror at what he saw.

It was one of the teenagers.

A boy, no older than fifteen, with skin a washed-out shade of green.

He was only aware that he was staring when a second teenager, a dark-skinned young lady with dreadlocks in her hair, yelled across the street, "What do you think you're looking at?"

Deeply ashamed of himself, Ajay turned his gaze back to his black shoes and walked the rest of the way home without once looking up.


End file.
